Automated computer device discovery services are commonplace in the data communication world today. All types and variations of computers, handheld devices, laptops, smartphones, servers, terminals or other computing devices are generally part of a communication network. As a result, automated device discovery operations have been used to maintain an accurate record of active network devices operating on a network.
In addition, network device monitoring is also an important part of everyday network procedures. Servers and computer agents may be used to centrally manage and monitor various features, such as, network device performance and activities. For example, a laptop or desktop computer operated by an employee of a corporation may receive multiple daily management processes and scheduled maintenance routines from a remote server during the course of day.
Examples of management monitoring processes may include: monitoring computer device services, processes and device metrics, such as, memory availability, application use, hard disk space, software driver updates and software patches, etc. However, it is not a simple task to monitor hundreds or even thousands of computers across an entire enterprise. For instance, the individual network devices operating on a network may have customized applications, hardware components, etc., and may not require certain monitoring operations to be performed.
A typical monitor set may include instructions for monitoring all drives (hard disks and virtual drives) on a particular machine, such as, the “A:”, “B:”, “C:”, “D:” and “E:” drives, and so on. However, a laptop computer may only have a “C:” and “D:” drive as part of its hardware profile. In such a case, the predefined monitoring operations of the specific monitor sets, if applied to the laptop, may still perform monitoring on all of the predefined drives. This may return unnecessary errors, and may require extra time and processing to perform these unneeded monitoring operations. Performing a monitor operation on five drives on a machine that only has two drives may provide unfavorable results.
By discovering valid objects belonging to corresponding network elements, tailored monitoring operations may be setup and performed to reduce errors, time and network resources. Additionally, autonomous procedures used to discover network devices and the corresponding attributes may reduce the amount of human intervention required to maintain a communications network.